Know Thy Enemy
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: An RTC, a drunk driver harbouring a deep medical secret, a man in denial and blaming himself, his wife admitted to the ED with a badly broken leg. Any normal day in the ED looks like this. But what happens when it's Zoe who was off her face, Jeff who's freaking out and Dixie who's injured? Will friendships, or even lives, be cut short?
1. Chapter 1

"You more or less recovered yet?" Jeff looked behind him to Dixie sitting in the back of the ambulance as he put pedal to metal and the vehicle jolted into action, all sirens blaring

"You try having someone projectile vomiting into your face," Dixie moaned, picking dried puke out of a strand of her hair. "My god, it'll take some sort of bloody miracle to unsee that. I really hate Saturday nights."

"I know, there aught to be some sort of guidelines as to what qualifies as an emergency, you have this rant every week," Jeff rolled his eyes as he stared at the satnav, punching in an address.

"Okay, Prince Charming, I'll shut my face. Where're we headed this time?"

"Finch Park Avenue; nine-year old in anaphylactic shock due to some sort of undiagnosed allergy."

"Well, at least this one won't involve alcoholic vomit," Dixie muttered, standing up and attempting to hunt down an oxygen mask.

"You never know, maybe this kid's allergic to vodka or something," they were barely ten meters out of the bay to the rear of the ED Dept. when it happened.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeff noticed Zoe's magenta red Prius turning out of a street to his left before swerving into Jeff's direction as if momentarily out of control. He watched Zoe's face through her windscreen contort into a grimace of sheer horror, unaware of exactly what it was he was doing.

It was only now that Jeff noticed he'd mirrored her moment of accidental carelessness to avoid hitting her, but not before he realized he'd mounted the kerb and crashed into a concrete bus shelter, crippling one side of the ambulance, smashing the windows and windscreen and blowing up the airbags right in his face, probably cracking ribs and bursting his nose and lip. Not quite fully aware of what was happening, he was brought back down to earth by the panicked sound of Dixie's voice.

"Jeffrey, what the hell are you do-" But at that point, the smashed right side of the vehicle was completely overbalanced by the intact left. The ambulance listed, and fell onto its side. Dixie's voice was cut off by an almighty crash of metal-on-metal. A scream. And the stomach-churning crack of breaking bones.

His thoughts, for a moment, were a mess. What was he so worried about, anyway?

Dixie.

All she knew right now was pain. As Jeff had for some reason driven straight into a bus stop, Dixie had been standing up. All she managed to do was cling on to a sort of shelf-y thing on the side of the vehicle and have a minor freak-out to herself. For an instant, Jeff seemed to regain control of the ambulance, and for that few moments, Dixie let out the breath she had subconsciously been holding and let go. But right there, at that moment, the van had buckled and then tipped. Dixie, being closest to it, had been the first thing to hit the side that was now apparently the floor, and as she'd hit, she'd felt something in her ankle jar out of place, and that alone had made her scream out in agony. But before she could say anything, or attempt to move or even try and assess the damage to her leg, a stretcher – one of the metal ones with wheels. Funny how she'd never actually worked out the name for them – had fallen on top of her.

And her leg had been completely crushed.

Zoe stopped her car, her head pounding and thoughts a mess, the hazard lights flashing orange as she stared at the wreckage of the ambulance, Jeff in the driver's seat, both airbags blown and no sign of Dixie. Making her way to the crippled vehicle in the sort of short-paced strut that was as close to running as you'd ever see her. "Jeff? You okay?"

"'M fine," he groaned, unclipping his seatbelt and standing up on the driver's side door what now served as the floor. "It's Dixie I'm worried about," he could hear a kind of muffled crying from behind the plastic glass panel separating the back of the ambulance from the cab. "Look, don't just stand there; go and get help!"

"What – how?"  
"YOU'RE A FEW BLOODY YARDS AWAY FROM A HOSPITAL, WORK IT OUT!"

"What about you?" Zoe gasped, rather taken aback.

"I'm staying here with Dix!"

"Jeffrey, if you're stuck, we're better off calling the fire brigade. I mean, what if Dixie's trapped under something; the longer she's there, the more severely she'll end up injured, you of all people should know that-"  
"GO!" Jeff, with blood gushing from various orifices and his maddened expression, managed to metaphorically kick Zoe into action. Now, he had to focus on Dixie. He turned around and stared through the panel, catching a short glimpse of an upturned stretcher. Then, a fluorescent yellow high-vis jacket, a pool of blood and – thank God – a flash of bloodied blonde hair. "Dixie? You okay?"

"Not even in a loose sense of the term..." Dixie groaned through great gulping sobs, her face contorting into a grimace. "Jeff..."

"Zoe's gone for help," Jeff said semi-calmly; all he wanted to do was run around in circles screaming, so his calm was simply a masking façade. Grabbing the emergency break glass hammer, he began trying to batter through to Dixie through the acrylic panel, managing a decent-sized crack after a few tries despite the pains in his chest begging him to stop.

"Jeff, what're you-"

"Just give me a minute; I'm coming for you."

"Jeff, no, please!" Dixie was screaming and crying now, quite clearly in pain beyond Jeff's imagination.

"Dix, what happened? What hurts?"

"I can't...Jeff, I'm trapped. There's something on top of me and...my leg...Jeff, I can't feel my foot..." Dixie buried her face in her hands. Not a few moments after, she felt shards of plastic rain down on her, cutting her face and arms. She looked up to see Jeff hanging his legs out of the space. "Jeff, don't!"

But it was too late.

As his extra weight pressed down on the stretcher, a fresh wave of unspeakable pain numbed her mind.

She screamed. Jeff panicked, moving himself off of it and getting down to her eye level. "Jeffrey, you see what happens when you try and be the hero all the time? My god..."

"Dix, I'm sorry! Is there anything I can do? And I mean now, by the way."

In her moment of weakness, Dixie grabbed his wrist, her eyes swimming with tears.  
"Stay with me..."

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks for the reviews, ladies and gents! Keep 'em coming! **

**BeethovenRIP: Unfortunately, he's put his foot in it once again. Shame he can't seem to listen to Dixie on anything.**

**olivia. 1: Oh no indeed! I betcha it must have :(**

**And I thought I should say; the original plan was for this to be Jamie and Robyn in a car, but decided that**

**a) It works better with Jeff and Dixie **  
**b) I wanted there to be a pairing and**** Jamie is gay, therefor that wouldn't really work  
and c) I like Dix more somehow. That should be a reason against this, but what the hell.**

**And is it just me that's noticed the SFX for Casualty could have been done by a three-year old? all it ever seems to be is a bit of theatrical blood sloshed about the place.**

* * *

"Jeff, how long have I been down here?" Dixie muttered, only just loud enough to be heard, shaking slightly and chewing at her lip to keep herself from bursting out crying again. She'd managed to get herself under a reasonable level of calm, but she was drenched in a cold sweat, and she was lying in a warm puddle of something that she had a bad feeling was her own blood.  
"About ten minutes; Zoe should have been back by now; I dunno what's taking her. How d'you feel?"  
"Cold...light-headed...absolutely bloody terrified. Jeff, when we crashed...my god, I thought...I thought we were gonna die..." She face-palmed with one hand, placing the other around Jeff's neck. Her partner did the same back, stroking her side bangs out of her face.  
"Dix, I'd never let that happen," he realized the sheer idiocy of what he'd said as Dixie started laughing slightly. "Okay, I can't control that, but...Dix, you're okay...you're gonna be fine..."

That was more comfort for himself than her.

* * *

"Zoe, what the hell is going on?" Robyn was the first person to realize that Zoe was struggling for breath and was carrying her shoes.  
"Look, long story...The ambulance crashed, Dixie's stuck in the back, Jeff's freaking out and the pair of them can't actually get out. Go get Fletch, Tess, Sam, Tom, Jamie or pretty much anyone else, call the fire brigade and get out and help them!"

* * *

It had taken ten minutes and three people, but eventually a combination of Ash, Jamie and Fletch (well, mostly Ash; Jamie was basically hanging onto Fletch's waist and pretending to be helping, what with having the upper body strength of a kitten and all) had managed to wrench the doors open. It had been pretty close to pitch black down at floor level for Dixie and Jeff, so when the light from the now-open back doors flooded in, the pair naturally flinched away, Dixie crying out and then stifling it as her already-broken leg displaced itself even more than it had already.

"Guys?" Jamie stuck his head in, not really knowing where to look. There was stuff everywhere; a first aid holdall had ripped open and there were bandages, bags of morphine, needles, breathing apparatus and various other things spilling out all over the place; a stretcher had overturned and everything was basically where it shouldn't have been. "Jeff? Dix?"  
"Jamie!" Jeff stuck his hand up, his other holding tightly onto Dixie as he felt her shaking and crying soundlessly, and waved it about manically. "My god, I never thought I'd be this glad to see you."  
"Where's Dixie?"  
"Mmph...'m here..." she groaned, trying to stick her head up, only to be pushed down again by Jeff.  
"Keep still, princess, you'll wind up making it worse," Jeff ran his hand through her hair. "Jamie, we're both down here; I think that stretcher's on top of Dix's leg but I'm fine, apart from a couple of airbag injuries. Is there anyone with you?"  
"Ash and Fletch. Why?"  
"Because you'll kill yourself if you try to move that thing."

* * *

Dixie let out a heavy sigh of relief as the object blocking her in and causing her so much intolerable pain was shifted off of her. Jeff sat up, taking her hand in his grasp and staring down at her legs.

"Oh. My. God. Dix, whatever you do, don't look at your feet," he breathed in a shallow gasp. Her dark green trousers were pretty much more hole than material, drenched in congealing blood. Her leg was bent at an almost ninety-degree angle, an enormous chunk of her tibia having pierced through her skin and her foot the wrong way around. Naturally, she ignored him completely.  
"Jesus Christ, I think I'm gonna be sick...How did this...happen?" her face screwed up in denying pain.

"Dixie, you're gonna be fine," Ash said as he climbed into the ambulance as Jamie sat by Jeff and Dixie and Fletch just generally stood looking a bit stupid. "Jeff, do you know if there's a collar and something I can strap her leg with in here?"  
"Heaven knows," Jeff muttered. "They'll be in there somewhere."

"Right, Jamie, let's best hope you know what you're doing," Ash said as he threw a needle, dressing and morphine in Jamie's direction. "I want her on ten of that, and I need you to check her BP and BPM, clear?"  
"Crystal," Jamie tore open the packet containing the needle and after a bit of cack-handed nerves and some help from Jeff, managed to get Dixie hooked up to a drip.  
"Alright, Dix, you can hear me, right?" the blonde paramedic nodded slowly. "Okay, it's Ash. I've got to sort your leg out before we can go anywhere. This is gonna hurt quite a lot, so...try not to scream." Setting her teeth and digging her fingernails into Jeff's hand, Dixie managed to stay reasonably quiet as Ash straightened her leg out as much as was humanly possible at that moment and strapped it up, but Jeff could see that she was biting her lip to the point of it starting to bleed and she was drained of colour entirely.

He had never felt so sorry for her in all his life.

* * *

"Okay, as you guys know this is Dixie; she's suffering from a severely displaced compound fracture to her right tib and fib which happened in a road accident. Two deep facial lacerations and a possible non-displaced fractured ankle as well; her BP and BPM are relatively normal, she's on ten morphine and assisted breathing due to shock. She needs her leg put back in place and temporarily plastered for now and I want her booked in for surgery tomorrow," Despite only just being able to speak, breathe and maneuver Dixie down the corridor at the same time, Jeff was managing like a trouper as he, Ash, Jamie, Robyn and Tess finally stopped in Resus after what felt like a lifetime. "On my count; one, two, three, lift!" The lot of them hauled Dixie up and managed to deposit her on the bed. Jeff had always marvelled at how quickly Holby's ED team managed to get things done; already Tess had unstrapped Dix's leg and started cutting the trouser leg off, Robyn and Jamie gloved up and trying to clean up the blood a little as Ash, seemingly not trusting newbie Jamie, checked the blocks and collar securing Dixie's neck in place.

Taking one last look at Dixie, he turned and walked out.

* * *

"Tess, it's been an hour, is there any kind of medical reason that Dixie's still clogging up Resus?" Zoe glared daggers at the somewhat bloody older woman as she walked out of Resus.  
"Sorry; we're having to prep her for emergency surgery right now - Robyn threw up then Ash made a right pig's ear of dealing with her leg, so unless you'd rather she lost it I'd let us go about our business," Tess stared at Zoe, realizing that her eyes were a tiny bit red behind her glasses. "Where the hell have you been, anyway?"  
"Kid in A&E with a pencil sharpener up his nose," Zoe said hastily. "I was just going to get back to that now."  
"Funny, you're not wearing gloves or anything," Tess raised an eyebrow, before her ears metaphorically pricked up and her nostrils flared. "Zoe, you absolutely stink of booze."

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Chapter 3

**Once again, thanks for the positive support!**

**BeethovenRIP: Don't worry, I'm not that evil! And as for Jeff...thats gonna be fun :)**

**Olivia: Yep, I feel kinda sorry for everyone but Zoe, whom I have no sympathy for and would quite happily punch in the face.**

**And is it just me that was really annoyed at last night's episode? WHERE THE FRIG WAS DIXIE!?**

* * *

"Zoe, when was the last time you had a drink?" Tess said with a raised eyebrow as Zoe sat on the bed in a consultation room, a breathalyzer in her mouth and Tess's disapproving scowl staring into her face.  
"Last night at Tom's thirtieth do," Zoe rolled her eyes, Tess reminding her frighteningly of her old primary school teacher. As Tess stared into the screen of the breath tester, her face tensed up, her eyes widening.

"Zoe, lying to me is pointless. This doesn't say that all you've had was a few glasses of champagne last night."  
Zoe face-palmed, sighing. "How much over the limit for driving was I?"  
"Nearly three times," Tess glared. "Zoe, I don't think that you realize exactly how serious this is. Because some deluded part of you seemed to think a bottle of wine before work was perfectly acceptable, Dixie could end up losing her leg or her mobility and in turn her job; she and Jeff could have _DIED _because of your blatant idiocy!"

"The accident wasn't my fault," Zoe slurred angrily. "I didn't crash the car, I didn't put so much as a scratch on the bloody ambulance; Jeff was the one driving recklessly and Dixie shouldn't have been standing in the first place. It wasn't any fault of mine, so you can't put a black mark on me because Dixie got crushed by a trolley."

"Zoe, looking to post blame and then having the audacity to say it was the victim's fault is beyond sadistic. Right now, I'm struggling to work out whether you're lying through your teeth or if you're just thick," Tess watched Zoe's expression fall. "Look, Zoe, if I report this I could have you sacked. But for now I'm willing to give t=you the benefit of the doubt. How long have you been doing this for?"

"Been doing what?" Zoe looked over her glasses at Tess.  
"The drinking. Zoe, I've come across binge drinkers before; this wasn't just a one-off and I know that because you're showing all the symptoms."  
"Oh, so first you're blaming me for the crash and now I'm an alcoholic?"  
"Zoe..."  
"Fine. About a month. It's just...Ever since the episode with the FGM and that Tamasha kid, I've been getting so stressed recently; it just seems like I've got so much more to do now that Ally, Aoife, Lloyd and Linda are all gone in less than a month and it just suddenly feels like it's all too much-"

"Okay, shut up," Tess cut her off. "I asked how long you've been on the piss, not for you to start making excuses and the sob story. The long and short of it is that you're addicted to alcohol, you know you are yet you're trying to deny it; as a result every day you're putting every patient that comes into this department at risk every day; as a result someone has been seriously injured, you and another could have been and you're choosing to do nothing about it. I can't believe I'm doing this, but I won't grass if - and only if - you get help. Now," Tess thrust a cardboard bedpan at Zoe. "Urine sample. Now."  
Zoe stood up, groaning as she headed out towards the Ladies'. "Do I have to?"  
"Just go!"

* * *

Louise looked up from her computer to see a woman in police uniform looking over her desk. "Can I help you?"  
"I think you might be able to. I'm DCI Gill Murray," the policewoman offered. "I'm looking for Jeffrey Collier, Kathleen Dixon and Zoe Hanna in connection to an RTC earlier this morning."

"Okay...erm, Zoe's in a consultation at the moment and Dix- ahem, Kathleen's still in Resus and I doubt you'll be able to talk to her any time soon as she was the only casualty in the RTC but I can try and hunt down Jeff for you?"  
"Great," DCI Murray said slowly.  
"If you'd like to take a seat, I'll be back with you in just a minute."

* * *

"Okay, so you mean to tell me that Zoe Hanna, Holby's residential lightweight, has an alcohol addiction?" Jeff stared in disbelief at Tess from outside Resus where a heavily sedated Dixie was lying as Ash attempted to undo the additional accidental damage done by him making an absolute hash of realigning the bones in her leg, Jamie and Fletch in aprons following him about, mopping up blood. Robyn was sitting outside the door, a bowl under her chin in case she puked again ("I'm sorry...just bones belong inside your body...compound fractures just squick me...")

Tess nodded slowly. "Mm-hmm. The reason she swerved in the first place is because she was nearly four times the drink/drive limit and she says she's been at it for about a month. Don't tell her I told you this on pain of death; I promised not to tell if she got help, but I thought you'd best know."  
"Oh my god, I'm-"

"Jeff? There's a DCI Murray in reception for you," Louise cut him off mid-sentence. Jeff nearly shat himself. Surely Zoe hadn't grassed him up and said it had been his fault? "It's about earlier."

* * *

"Mr Collier?" DCI Murray looked at him, tearing his thoughts open with her steely gaze. "I understand you were involved in an RTC in which you swerved to avoid another driver, am I right?"  
"Uh-huh," Jeff nodded, wincing as he remembered the pain in Dixie's face as she'd told him she'd thought they were going to die.

"Well, we investigated both vehicles and found this in Ms Hanna's car," DCI Murray held up a plastic evidence bag containing an empty bottle of Smirnoff vodka. "And I've been informed that she was drunk while on the road," the Detective Chief Inspector's expression hardened. "But there was also a heavy smell of alcohol and heroine in the ambulance."  
"We were on Saturday night response; the alcohol was someone else's sick you could smell. And as for the heroin...did it never occur to you that morphine is basically heroin? If what you're trying to say is that I was absolutely stoned and this was my fault, you're having a laugh!"

"Mr Collier, I'm-" but Jeff had already stormed off.

* * *

"What the hell do you think you're playing at?" Jeff's sight misted red as he saw Zoe walking down the corridor. Tess's warning not to let on that he knew about her problem went totally down the pan.  
"What?" Zoe looked perplexed yet was practically frothing at the mouth with anger.  
"Don't play stupid! Thanks to you being totally off your face, Dix could have died, and this whole time I've been blaming myself for your stupidity!"  
"Tess said she wouldn't-" Zoe stopped talking, realizing that it was pointless. "Look, Jeffrey, I've been in a car accident, been accused of being an alcoholic and I am currently holding a bowl full of wee, how much more do you want to embarrass me?"  
"Would you quit playing victimized!" Jeff yelled. "I know about the booze in the car; I know you've been on the piss - I was just accused of being a druggie as well as an alcie thanks to you - but the most part is you could have KILLED her!" Jeff threw a heavy punch at Zoe, bursting the consultant's top lip and causing her to drop the urine sample she'd been carrying. Jeff made to hit her again, but before he could, DCI Murray had already stormed the scene, tackled him around the waist and flattened him.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Robyn cried as she followed the policewoman. "This is a hospital, not bloody riot control!" She hauled Jeff to his feet, and the stunned paramedic dusted himself down, once again almost crippling with the pain in his chest.

"Mr Collier, I'm sorry I accused you of causing the accident; I've been informed how much Ms Dixon means to you and fully understand how hard this must be for you. Car crashes are a pretty mucky business; sometimes the vehicle's a wreck and everyone's fine - others there's barely a scratch yet there's casualties. What Ms Hanna did, leaving the car at the scene despite knowing that it was her fault, then ignoring it and hoping it'll all go away is pretty damn low, and-" she cut off, glancing behind her. "What she's done now is just bloody cowardice."

Because she'd just realized that the fire door was open.

And Zoe was gone.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	4. Chapter 4

**Olivia. c .king1: I get annoyed with characters while I write about them...it's frustrating...**

**BeethovenRIP: You sound like my mum! :P Yes, I think he should...**

**Carlykinz: Thank you! To be honest, I'm not mad keen on Zoe which is odd because we share a few characteristics; we kind of have the same attitude and take-no-shit persona. **

* * *

"Ash, this is getting stupid now. Are you almost done? Because we really need to free up Resus," Charlie walked into Resus where Ash and Jamie were standing pretty much up to their armpits with hand sanitizer and Fletch in the middle of applying a temporary cast to Dixie's leg, Dix herself semi-conscious and pretty out of it what with all the drugs and other such crap in her system.  
"Yep," Jamie spoke instead of Ash, who looked pretty embarrassed. "Ash managed to un-scuzz Dixie's leg, so if we manage to keep it reasonably straight until about four PM when she's booked in for surgery then it's plain sailing from here."  
"Jamie, there's no such thing as that here; you say that, you jinx it, so just keep your trap shut. Get her into a cubicle until a space in a ward frees up," Charlie turned to walk out, then something in his head clicked. "Do you lot know anything about Zoe?"  
"N..not really," Jamie stammered. "Why?"  
"Don't know. She's been acting weird these past few weeks, and now she's been abducted by aliens or something and I've got no idea where she is."

* * *

"Morning, Princess," Jeff sat in Dixie's cubicle, gently prodding her awake.  
"Jeff...cut it out...Jesus Christ, my leg hurts..." Dixie tried to raise her head, then gave up when she realized that there wasn't enough energy anywhere in her body to do so. Tugging gently at the needles in her hand, she looked up to the morphine drip above her. "Oh...that'll explain why I feel like my head's full of water...Oi, what happened to your face?"  
"You don't look too great yourself, madame," Jeff rolled his eyes, taking in Dixie's black eye and the scratches all over her face. "You won't believe this."  
"What?...Christ, my leg's still attached, right?" Dixie panicked a lot more than was perhaps necessary.  
"Dix, calm it. Nope, you're all still there. Think about it, if you'd lost a leg, you'd be in Intensive Care, not a cubicle. Nope, the accident wasn't my fault - the cops seemed to think so because they could smell that bloke's sick from last night and a bust morphine bag in the van, and they thought I'd been getting myself stoned and then crashing just for the helluvit - but there was an empty bottle in Zoe's car. She was totally off her face; I turned to avoid her crashing into me and overshot it a bit. And, believe it or not, Zoe's got problems."

"What, you mean..." Dixie made a drink gesture with her hand. Jeff nodded. "My god, are you sure you're okay? Your nose looks pretty sore..." Dixie tentatively dabbed at the bruising under Jeff's eyes and the bridge of his nose.  
"I'm fine; it's you with the busted leg. Oh, and that's the other thing; you're meant to be having surgery tonight to pin everything in your leg back where it should be."  
"Christ, don't remind me," Dixie groaned. "I heard Ash say something about it...whilst him and Fletch were mucking about with my..." Dixie turned a bit green right there. "My god...I feel kinda sick thinking about earlier... Was that seriously what my leg looked like?" Jeff nodded again. "Is it broken?"  
"No, it's just a scratch. What do you think? There was a dirty great chunk of bone sticking out of your shin!"  
"Right, calm yourself, I know it was a stupid question," an evil smirk came across Dixie's face. "And I just realized that you've got twelve weeks of Friday and Saturday nights all to yourself."

"Look at me, I'm peeing myself with joy."

* * *

"Look, I feel pretty crappy sitting here like Lady Muck ordering you about like this, but I'll have to live with it. Jeff, can you do me a favour when you go home and grab me a couple of pairs of pyjamas - preferably with shorts - sweatpants and a t-shirt, my phone, headphones and my black Adidas trainers?" Dixie said as she sat behind the curtains around her bed in the ward with Jeff, a few minutes before she was supposed to go into surgery, a nurse removing the temporary over-the-knee cast on her leg and peeling back the layers of gauze taped over the wound where the bone had come out of her leg. "Oh, and you're going to have to walk Abs for me until I can get back to work."  
"Yes, ma'am," Jeff half-laughed, looking down at the laceration to Dixie's leg, which was currently held together by a few paper stitches. "My god, you're gonna end up with one absolute hell of a scar after this."  
"Don't try and freak me out any more than I already have been," Dix rolled her eyes. "I'm not finding the idea of having a load of metal in my leg too appealing right now. Plus, there's something up with my ankle that means they're going to have to re-break and then set it properly. I'm not looking forward to coming to considering how much it hurt the first time round."  
"You'll be fine, Dix, don't worry. I'll be right there when you wake up."  
"Don't let the dog on my bed!" Dixie said loudly as he walked off.

* * *

"Jamie, you do realize that Zoe's gonna absolutely massacre us when she finds out we've been in her office?" Robyn turned to Jamie, who was rifling through Zoe's desk drawers. There was really nothing interesting whatsoever. Paperwork...paperwork...paperwork...oh look, a packet of cigarettes...paperwork...etc.

"I don't care. Charlie knows something's up, and I wanna get to the bottom of it," Jamie said, digging through the wastepaper basket as Robyn leaned against the door in case anyone tried to come in. Jamie gasped as he unearthed a half-empty bottle of vodka. "Bingo."

TO BE CONTINUED...


	5. Chapter 5

**Ordinarycasgirl and Guest: What?! o_O**

**XxTassBxX: Get ready to feel for Zoe! I know that you ship Zoe/Nick, but seeing as I hate Sam, do you think that Zoe/Tom would work?**

**Olivia. c. King1: I know. Poor Dix :(**

**Carlykinz: Aren't we all? That will soon be revealed!**

**BeethovenRIP: Oops, I'm really sorry! Being an atheist, I often forget how offensive I can be! I'll try and stay clean from now on!**

**Warning for serious Jeff/Dixie fluff here!**

* * *

"I dunno what you're looking at, because you're not gonna see your mum again for about a month," Jeff stared at Abs sitting behind him as he dug through Dixie's wardrobe. The dog whined and did the canine equivalent of a face-palm, licking the tip of his nose. "And I'm about to bugger off as well,; you're not exactly wasting away, so your dinner isn't really my top priority either," Jeff was lying on his stomach, his head and most of his chest actually in the wardrobe now. "Black flipping trainers, where the heck am I meant to find anything in here?" Abs gave him an inquisitive stare. "I'm looking for the Ruby Slippers," Jeff explained. "She seems to have just about every other pair of shoes that ever existed in here, and I've never even seen her wear most of them. But then she does wear pretty much the same thing every day...Why am I even talking to you? You're a dog!" Abs gave him a look that clearly said; _'I know exactly what I am, thanks.'_

Jeff really wished that Dix had at least given him a list, or even better told him where the hell he was actually meant to find her stuff - he could have sworn he'd seen stuff on _The Hoarder Next Door _tidier than Dix's bedroom - so he knew what he was looking for and where exactly it was that he was looking for it (it'd taken him about half an hour to suss out that instead of having it in the shower like any normal person, Dix kept her shampoo down the side of the loo - though why she'd want shampoo anyway was beyond him entirely; how was a person supposed to shower with their leg in plaster anyway?)

For a moment, the thought that this had been a deliberate act in order to get back at him for the time that he'd broken his nose and left her lumped with the Friday lot by herself crossed his mind. But then he felt bad for ever so much as letting himself think that. All he had in his head now was that he wished that he'd really laid it into Zoe.

* * *

"Dixie? Wakey, wakey!" Jeff leaned over a post-op, pretty drugged-up Dix as she lay still absolutely dead to the world. "Oi, snotface! Look, I promised you that I'd be here with you when you woke up; it's eight o'clock, I'm not allowed to eat on the ward, Abs is tied up outside, we've both been waiting about for two hours now, neither of us have eaten anything yet and I can speak for us both when I say that I for one am absolutely Hank Marvin. C'mon, be a good girl, open your eyes and then I can go out for a KFC - with the dog. And you know exactly what happened last time I gave him baked beans-"

"You do that...Jeff, I swear I'll...have you killed...Because I don't trust you to...clean the resulting dog barf...off the kitchen floor..." Dixie sighed, her eyes still shut and her leg in traction.  
"Right, can I go now?"  
"I haven't seen you yet...How do I know I'm not just deluded?"  
Not missing a beat, Jeff grinned slyly, swooped in and kissed the tip of her nose. "That's how."

* * *

"Excuse me, but as a lifelong taxpayer, I pay your wages, so I expect you to get some actual work done instead of making us sit about all day!"  
"Oi, you! Am I ever gonna get seen to?"  
"For ****'* sake, I'm bleedin' from me face, do somethin'!

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PLEASE!" Louise screamed at the top of her lungs. "We're a little short-staffed right now, so as a result we're having to prioritize who we treat first. So, I'm sorry, but that means that heart attacks and severe injuries are going to be dealt with sooner than nosebleeds!" Louise targeted this mainly at the teenage dirtbag who'd sworn at her.  
"Aw, is that just your poncy way uv sayin' you're above treatin' people like me?"  
"I meant exactly what I said, what are you, thick?" Louise growled. The teen stood up and threw a punch across the desk, knocking Louise square in the jaw. She toppled slightly on her high heels, her mouth open in a asp, clutching her cheek.

"OI!" Charlie stormed up to the lad. "Look, mate, our staff don't come to work for idiots like you to attack them, so just buck up your ideas and-" That was when Tom ran in breathlessly, Zoe, unconscious and caked in sick, spreadeagled in his arms.

"She was lying in the carpark like this," Tom panted. "There was a smashed bottle next to her...but I don't think she was attacked."  
"Charlie, we were-" Jamie and Robyn came running from the vague area of Zoe's office, but Jamie cut off when he saw her.  
"Jam, later. Just follow me. Tom, get her into Resus!"

* * *

"Zoe Hanna, thirty-nine years of age. Found KO'd, suspected alcohol overdose; possible alcohol poisoning, but it might be liver failure," Tom said quickly as Zoe lay fitting in Resus, Robyn getting her onto an IV and Jamie checking her over.  
"BP's forty over twenty-two; BPM sixty and still dropping. She's bradycardic. I think we - she's going into cardiac arrest! Charlie!"  
"Okay," Charlie tore Zie's dress open just below her cleavage and stuck the defibulators to her chest. "Charging three hundred...charging three-fifty...shocking...NOW!" The jolt of electricity seemed to bring Zoe momentarily to her senses before she retched painfully.

"Turn her on her side," Charlie said without missing a beat as a combination of Tom and Jamie flipped the stretcher she was on onto one side, and blood-laced sick hit the floor, Robyn once again getting caught in the splash zone.  
"Great...second clean uniform today...just when I thought this job couldn't get any more glamorous..." Robyn looked down at herself, her face a mix of fear and pity.

"'Mh okay...lemme up..." Zoe groaned.  
"No way...Zoe, if something like that had just come out of my gob, I'd be bricking myself," Robyn gave her a sympathetic grimace. "Holy moly, how much of what did you drink, anyway?"

"I don't have the faintest clue," Tom muttered. "Robyn, go get cleaned up. I'll refer her upstairs to Pediatrics...find out exactly what she's ingested..."

TO BE CONTINUED...


	6. Chapter 6

**OrdinaryCasGirl: All will soon be revealed...**

**XxTassBxX: I know! *squee***

**BeethovenRIP: So would I! I've spat a helluva lot of blood out in a oner (I do mountain biking) but if I were to puke it up, I'd die!**

**Carlykinz: Haha, Dix and Jeff are so cute! And the comment from last night's episode about Dixie putting Jeff on a diet - I think I died laughing.**

**Olivia. c. king1: I talk to my dogs just like that too :)**

* * *

"Mmph..." Zoe groaned, her eyes flickering open. Sighing deeply, she looked around, thought all she could see from her eye level with her drug-marred vision was a massive white blur and a kind of fuzzy blob that looked vaguely like Tom. "...'m I dead?"  
"No," Tom answered, looking a little perplexed at Zoe's question.  
"Shit. I feel like...I'm gonna puke..." Zoe's agonized expression said it all as she lay grimacing and tugging at the saline drip in her hand.  
"I don't think you will, seeing as you've got absolutely zilch left in your system to regurgitate," she raised her head, looking pretty confused - though between an alcohol overdose and emergency sedation and procedure, looking intelligent was probably a little hard. "Zoe, you'd given yourself alcohol poisoning. There was around about forty units of alcohol in your system - that's roughly a 750ml bottle of vodka - and we had to pump your stomach, otherwise your liver would have completely packed it in and you'd have died. Look, I need you to answer this honestly; were you trying to kill yourself?"  
"If I was...I wouldn't tell you..."  
"Zoe, I'm talking to you as a patient, not a fellow medical professional. And if you're a patient, you have the right to medical confidentiality. Whatever you tell me stays in here; I'm not feeding everything you say back to Tess like you seem to think. You seem to have it in your head that we're your enemies; you need to see that what we're doing is attempting to address the problem and do something about it, not get you fired." There was a long,pregnant pause as Zoe mulled her answer over, before she nodded slowly.

"I'd lose my job...if I told anyone...and besides...after yesterday...I'm gonna get sacked anyway...so what's the point?...Tess threatened to fire me...because of..." Zoe tailed off, unsure of exactly how to word what she was going to say next.  
"Tess is full of empty threats, and you know it. Unless Dixie takes this to court - which she wont, you know her; she'll be willing to live and let live - it doesn't go any further than this. What we have to focus on right now is dealing with this issue. What happened is another person was injured because you were drunk, and then you tried to drink yourself to death because of it. What I'm seeing here is that you're using alcohol mor as a drug than anything else; basically how we use morphine. Whenever you find yourself stressed about anything, you drink; it goes away. Stop me if I'm wrong."  
"That's pretty much...what I told Tess...I was just...whinging more..."  
"Well, there's issues with doing that. When you're under the influence of anything of that nature, you're not yourself. You make mistakes more easily. You do stupid things," Tom stopped, thinking back to her complete denial yesterday morning. It was now four AM the next day, and he was dying for a kip and something to eat, but that was going to have to wait. "You don't see things the way that they actually happen. That's why you didn't think the accident was your fault. If she has a heart, Tess is eventually gonna see that you need help, not trouble."  
"I'm sorry..." Zoe groaned miserably.  
"I understand. I think all that leaves to do is deal with it. You're not getting to just ignore the problem and hope that it'll go away. I can refer you to an addiction specialist and get you counselling or-"  
"Just leave me...to it," Zoe pushed Tom away from her.  
"I don't think you really get how serious this actually is. You went into cardiac arrest down there after I found you in a puddle of your own sick in the car park, you were vomiting blood, you'd ingested over forty times the amount of alcohol you can actually process in an hour; your liver went into absolute overdrive and you basically just started shutting down."  
"I don't care...No-one else...gets to know about this."  
"Fine - what the hell are you doing?" Tom said somewhat angrily as Zoe sat up, visibly shaking, tugging the needle out of her hand, totally ignoring the blood running down her wrist.  
"Discharging myself," Zoe stood up, barely able to keep on her feet, and grabbed the plastic bag containing her clothes and shoes from beside the bed, before making a beeline for the Ladies'.  
"Zoe, you'll-"  
"I don't give! Tom, I don't have a problem...If I do, I'll sort it by myself. Now just piss off and let me get on with myself."  
"Fine," Tom growled. "But I don't expect we'll be colleagues for much longer."

* * *

"Ooh, looks like someone's got a secret admirer!"  
"No, 'someone' just fancied a coffee and told her ever-loyal servant and his guilty conscience to go out and get her one," Dixie rolled her eyes, staring at the cardboard mug on her bedside table with a fluorescent orange post-it note stuck to it with the single line '_Enjoy - J xxx'_ written on it.  
"I don't think that's all you fancy," Sam giggled childishly, having gone up to see Dixie during her break.  
"Sam, if you think I have a thing about you, you're having yourself on."  
"I meant Jeff, stupid!" Sam prodded Dixie lightly in the ribs - unfair, seeing as Dix was on her back and pretty much defenseless.  
"Well, I suppose we are married and we live together, I think I have every right to fancy him. Now, I've been on my arse - well, back - doing absolutely nothing for the past fifteen hours, I barely slept last night, I've got fifteen staples in my leg, which also happens to be broken, I'm pretty much bored to death and in short I'm not not in the mood, so don't annoy me."  
"Geez, don't eat me alive! So, how much longer until you're back at work?"  
"Three weeks in traction here, then three more in the bloody cast; four in a moon boot after that and then two on crutches. Fun, I know."  
"Still, three months off work to look forward to. Not many of us here get that kind of a break."  
"Yeah, three months sat on my arse with a broken leg. Not exactly the holiday in Florida that you're making it out to be."  
"Well, rather you than me, I suppose."  
"Thanks. I'm not gonna miss the all-nighters, that's for certain. Bloody hell, how have I still got sick in my hair from two nights ago?" Dixie sighed, picking up her phone and surfing through her texts.

_JEFF: Morning, princess. how r u?_  
_SENT: Crappy. Wer ru?_  
_JEFF: On a call out. Will b up once im back. C u soon_  
_SENT: K. No heroics; last thing we need is the pair of us in here. Someone's gotta look after me once I get out! :) xxxx_

* * *

"Where the hell have you been?" Dixie laughingly smacked Jeff's bum as he sat down beside her, still dressed in his work stuff.  
"Sorry. A kid literally broke his bum falling down the stairs - you really had to be there, it was pretty funny - and when I got here, the lift was clogged up with a trolley so I had to take six flights to get up here."  
"You could use it though," Dixie laughed. "You'll lose your beer gut."  
"I haven't got one!" Jeff protested angrily, sucking his stomach in.  
"Oh yes you have, mate!"  
"Okay, Dixie, I'm being serious here. I was thinking-"  
"We know from experience that that's dangerous."  
"Seriously, Dix, when you're back at home, what are we meant to do? I can apply for special leave to look after you for a bit, but there's three things I was wondering about. Number one: how are you supposed to shower?"  
"I looked it up. Apparently, with crutches, bin liners and great difficulty. Either that or the head-over-the-bath-with-the-shower-head fiasco; option b's looking more likely because getting the cast wet at all causes skin infections, but I'm not meant to get water anywhere near my leg until my staples are out. Either way, you'll have to be on red alert in case anything happens."  
"Okay, that's that dealt with. Number two; stairs. How do you suggest managing that?"  
"Two words. Bum. Shuffle."  
"And number three; Lil Abs. You know that he doesn't listen to me and you can't very well take him out like this."  
"Well, you'll have to grin and bear it."  
"He misses you, Dix; slept the whole night beside your bed the way he does when you're unwell like he knows something's wrong. Hell, I miss having you about as well. Plus, I'm running out of clean pants."  
"Oh for god's sake, Jeffrey Collier, you really are the most pathetic sod I've ever met. We have a washing machine."  
"I know...Dix, I'm sorry..."  
"For what?"  
"I just feel so bad for letting this happen. I know I was trying to avoid Zoe, but I shouldn't have mounted. I should have been able to control the van...When I accidentally stood on you and I heard you scream, it really hit me...I'd done this. I should have controlled it. Dix, it hurts seeing you this way...I don't know how I'll be able to cope with helping you out at home; I couldn't keep you safe from this in the first place, so I have no idea why you're trusting me afterwards..."  
"Someone's got a bit of a guilty conscience. Jeff, I'm not blaming you. At all. If I was, you know fine well that we wouldn't be talking right now; you'd be at home setting the place on fire trying to make yourself dinner and I'd be sitting here feeling sorry for myself. Look, Jeff..." Dixie pulled himself into a bit of an awkward hug.  
"I'm sorry...Look, we'll get by, princess. We always do."

TO BE CONTINUED...


	7. Chapter 7

**Okay, this is just a quickie. In two days, I'll be home from Canada (I'm on holiday right now - I don't want** **any episode spoilers as I haven't watched last week's yet. - and I'll have my laptop, on which is saved my next big update. I watched Gone in Sixty Seconds and this seriously inspired this. **

**Guest: sorry, I didn't watch when Nick was a part of this. **

**Ordinarycasgirl: I think so, but I think Jeff and Dixie's marriage and friendships between them and Zoe are gonna be stretched to the limits by it **

**xXTassBXx: I won't spoil it, but there really is more than meets the eye about Zoe...**

**BeethovenRIP: Men...oh the joys...**

**Olivia: zoe has a hell of a lot of explaining to do, but as I've said, there's a lot more to it...**

**carlykinz: I'm happy that at least a few people aren't seeing Zoe as the emotionless bad guy, even if it was her fault. **

* * *

_She wasn't alright. Dixie was lying face-down, blood from a cut in the side of her head pooling around her, staining red her blonde hair and scaring Jeff near to death. _

_"Dix?" He jabbed her halfheartedly in the shoulder, trying to get some sort of response out of her. Nothing happened. "Dixie? Look princess, stop messing about, this is bloody serious!" There was an utterly stupid part of him that thought she was just trying to push his buttons, and for this he poked her again. There wasn't a lot to be worried about; even superficial head injuries bleed like anything, but Jeff freaked when for the second time she didn't respond to his touch. His sensibility coming back to him, he pressed two fingers to her neck. Her pulse...well, it wasn't there. It was there he noticed what should have been obvious right from the start. Her neck was broken. Her asthma inhaler was lying in the blood around her head; whether the injury or an attack had been what did it was unsure. _

_'Jeff you are an absolute bloody idiot. Thanks to you, she's gone. This is your fault. You crashed, you played about with her because you thought she was having a giraffe for so long and now she's dead.'_

_Tears he'd never wanted to have to shed over the death of his wife slipped from his eyes as he scooped her up in his arms, cradling her body like a fragile doll and sobbing into her hair. "I'm sorry...I'm sorry, princess...Dix, come back to me...I'm sorry..."_

_The sadistic voice taunting him inside his head was back. _

_'_You killed her...'

* * *

Jeff woke up to find the Aerosmith t-shirt and boxers that sufficed as pyjamas for him drenched in a cold sweat and Lil' Abs standing on top of him, barking in his face and pawing at him. In the dog's head, he was being helpful, but according to Jeff all he was doing was choking him with dog breath and scratching his chest. Thumping on the wall and hoping to get through to Dixie's room on the other side, he almost cried out when he got no response. Hands shaking, a terrible fear in the pit of his stomach, he grabbed his mobile phone off of the bedside table, forcefully shoving the dog off of him at the same time. It took him three tries to punch in the passcode. Naturally, Dix's number was at the first on his most recent contacts. Hitting her number, it took six or seven rings before she actually picked up.

"Jeffrey, what are you playing at? It's two o'clock in the morning!"

"Dix, thank god, you're not dead!"

"What the hell do you mean I'm not dead? Jeff, give me one scenario in which someone's died of a broken leg."

"I'm pretty sure it's possible."

"Jeff, seriously, why would I be dead?" Dixie sounded gravelly and pretty out of it, but she'd just been woken up. And it was then that Jeff remembered that the hospital was next to a dead zone for signal, so he was surprised that he'd gotten through to her at all.

"Oh...god, I'm sorry...Dix, I just had the worst bloody nightmare ever, it...hold up, what happened to you in the accident?"

"Jeff, I really don't wanan talk about this...If you've seriously forgotten about it, my leg was crushed by a trolley and then you stood on me."

"Jeez, I should have known...I just had the worst dream of my life that...but...well, I should have known it wasn't actually happening."

"Jeff, if you don't tell me this, we are getting a divorce and I'm gonna take the dog."

"Look, in this dream, we hard the same accident but I didn't notice soon enough what had happened and you'd died by the time I'd figured out something was proper wrong..."

"Hey, what happened to the have-a-go hero?" Dixie sounded more sympathetic now that she'd heard Jeff's sob story and gotten over the fact that he'd woken her up stupidly early in the morning.

"He had a go, incapacitated his partner-best friend-cum-wife and decided to learn to do as he's told for once."

"Jeff, how many times do I have to tell you that this hasn't affected anything between us? It was a bloody accident, it couldn't have been helped and I'm gonna be fine. Okay, I can't work for ages and I'm never gonna be able to go through airport security without bleeping again because of all the metal on my leg, but I really couldn't care less. If anything's annoying me then it's you apologising to me every other breath."

"Okay, I'm- you know what, forget it. Dix, I'm being human here. Of course I feel bad;because of me you're in hospital!"

"Listen mate, I get it," Dixie's voice was broken by a huge yawn. "I gotta go, Jeff, I'm totally shattered."

"I've hardly slept - had to do your Friday night shift."

"You slept long enough to have that dream, shit yourself then wake me up to make sure I wasn't dead."

"Shuddup!"

"Just kidding, Jeffrey, just kidding. See you tomorrow, right?"

"Course. S-sorry about waking you up. And everything else."

TO BE CONTINUED...


	8. Chapter 8

Slowly but surely, three weeks rolled by then faded into memory. It had taken about four applications and no small amount of arm-twisting, but Jeff eventually managed to blag eight weeks of 'Personal Slave Absence' – his joke name he'd come up with for the special leave he'd taken out; the name was purely for the sake of winding Dixie up – to keep an eye on and do the washing for his currently incapacitated colleague-boss-wife-cum-best friend. Dix, after three weeks doing absolutely diddly-squat, was released from hospital. And with regards to Zoe; after 'discharging herself', she hadn't been seen at all and Tess was at the point of waiting for Zoe to hand in her notice or be brought into Resus by newly qualified paramedic and Dixie's temporary replacement, Gillian.

"Right, Lady Muck, I hope you're enjoying yourself," Jeff was in the process of trying to clean up a puddle of Flash following the minor avalanche of cleaning products caused by him trying to find the bin-bags and accidentally gutting a cupboard. "What're you doing, anyway?"  
"Attempting to contact Zoe and failing pretty miserably," Dixie muttered, staring at her phone.

"Ah, okay. Wait, why?"  
"I was talking to Robyn the other day and she said that Zoe hasn't shown herself in most of a month. Now she's not answering her phone or texts, Facebook, Twitter, emails; nothing."  
"Dixie..." Jeff only had to gesture to her plastered foot to get his point across.

"Jeff, I know it's nothing I should care about, but think about it. She's an alcoholic in denial with this huge mess of shit on her conscience who hasn't been seen dead or alive in a month. As much as I can't stand the sight of her right now and as much of a pain in the bum as she is, I'm not wanting her to have tried to kill herself over this."

"About that..." Jeff stood up, looking in Dixie's opinion rather stupid in pink Marigold gloves. She'd been leaning on the table – much to her chagrin, she was only halfway through her spell with her leg in plaster – and Jeff on the floor arsing about with the cleaning products that he'd spilled all over the place.  
"Firstly, Jeff, all you're doing with that bog roll is moving everything about a bit. Get something absorbent, please. What is it?"

"You know what you said about Zoe killing herself? Well, she's already tried that. Tom found her completely stoned in the car park and she ended up with alcohol poisoning; she went into cardiac arrest in Resus; according to Jamie she puked and it looked like something from The Woman in Black. I really have no idea why I didn't bother to tell you that, but–"  
"Oh Christ," Dixie leaned her head back, breathing out sharply. "Why the hell am I blaming myself?"  
"You shouldn't be. Dix, none of this was your fault. I was the one that crashed and Zoe was the one who was swerving all over the place; you were the only one who didn't instigate this and yet you're the only one that suffered for it. It's not bloody fair; I'm not gonna be so heartless as to say this should've been Zoe, but if it could have been me that this happened to, it would have been."  
"Stop apologizing; Jeff, it's fine. I don't really care that much about this happening – shit happens and besides, it was a complete accident – if everyone was totally in control of their driving absolutely all the time then the pair of us would be pretty much completely out of a job – I can see that it was an accident and I'm not blaming you for anything. Wait a minute, c'mere," she gestured for him to come over to her and stared at his face for a bit before pressing a fingertip to each side of the bridge of his nose. Despite Jeff's angry moan of "Gerroff!", Dixie continued what she'd been about to do. "Does it hurt when I do this?"  
"Dix..."  
"Shut up. Answer the question."  
"Yes, yes it does."  
"Have you been having nosebleeds at all?"  
"Yes."  
"Persistent?"  
"Pretty," Jeff looked shocked as Dix started unbuttoning his shirt. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Jeff, I wasn't the only one that was hurt and you know it. You were just trying and failing to be chivalrous and instead you caused yourself to look like a complete idiot by not doing anything about it," Dixie took in the fading bruised line where his seatbelt had been and the dark splodges around his ribcage that resembled a combination of blunt trauma and the bruising that came about around a broken bone. Jeff pulled his shirt closed again.

"Right, you've poked about enough now. What's your diagnosis, Dr Kathleen?"

"First of all, pick those up for me," Dixie gestured to her crutches, which she'd inconveniently managed to drop on the floor. "Secondly, get in the car."  
"I'm not driving," Jeff panicked slightly.  
"Oh right, and I'm going to?" Dixie rolled her eyes. "Jeffrey Collier, for the last time I don't trust you any less than I did this time two months ago. Albeit you have a short temper, a bit much in the stomach department and maybe not enough in the hair and you have an annoying habit of running into burning buildings which leaves me with a lot of forms to fill out when you get damaged – if Colleague Insurance is a thing, I think I need it – but I'd still put my life in your hands, no matter what stupid nonsense you decide to get up to."  
"Ta," Jeff made some sort of odd movement that probably would have been running his hand through his hair had he possessed just a little more of it, contemplating Dixie's uncomplimentary yet incredibly true description of him. "Where are we going anyway?"  
"Back to the ED."  
"This you searching for Zoe again?"  
"She can wait. If you weren't as thick as two short planks, you'd have worked out that this is is the fact that after you-know-what, you never got yourself checked out and if the bruises all over everything are anything to go on, you've been sticking out bruised ribs and a broken nose for three weeks."

* * *

"`Told you I was fine," Jeff rolled his eyes at Dixie, who was mucking about with her iPod next to him.

"Mate, two cracked ribs, a broken nose and a chipped jaw isn't 'fine'. It's 'I whacked my face off the airbag but I was cacking myself too much to get it looked at'."  
"What I meant is I've managed to keep all my bones inside my body, so compared to some I got pretty lucky."  
"Bugger off," Dixie shoved him in the shoulder lightly, the comment he'd just made coming out quite a bit meaner than he'd perhaps meant it. They'd spent three hours waiting in A&E, then another two getting Jeff sorted out, so neither of them had much patience left for humour or pathetic attempts at it.  
"Dix, what time is it?"  
"I don't know, Jeffrey, what time is it?" Dixie had her arms folded, reminiscent of a stubborn child.

"It's BEER O'CLOCK!"

"Oh God, you're not thinking what I think you might be thinking if that makes sense, are you?"

"C'mon, you – ahem, neither of us've been down the road in ages; it'd be good to catch up with everyone," Jeff elbowed her repeatedly in the ribs, laughing somewhat manically the way he always did whenever he suggested they did something utterly stupid.

"Jeff, no. I'm tired as hell – walking should never have to involve your arms – and I really can't be arsed. And I doubt you should go either, considering that you alone would make you look like you're skiving off" Dixie shut him up with a look; Jeff seemed to have gotten his act together in terms of listening to Dix of late, though this attitude lasting was probably a bit much to hope for.

* * *

Jeff and Dixie's home arrangements had changed an awful lot since the accident. For a start, Dixie saying things such as 'I need the loo' or 'I'm going for a shower' which Jeff would never have even thought about under normal circumstances meant he had to now drop whatever he was doing and be stood outside the door on red alert with his phone and whatever else might be required in the worst case scenario. He had just about broken his back attempting to shift both his and Dixie's bedroom furniture about so that he could sleep in her room – though this meant that if she was awake, then according to her it was only fair that he was as well. If the fact that she had broken her leg and was in plaster wasn't bad enough, owing to the fracture having been so far up her shin had meant that she'd ended up with an over-the-knee cast, making getting up out of a sitting or lying down position and moving about in general pretty difficult and damn near impossible without Jeff's help.

"Going to the toilet," Dixie muttered as she got in, Jeff following her. Going to the pub had been abandoned in favour of McDonald's and yet another slightly boring but quiet night watching Corrie and falling asleep on the couch. They'd drawn to the conclusion that they'd been on their feet – well, foot in the case of Dixie – for about three hours (the ED had been packed out and it'd been about two and three quarter hours before a spotty fourteen-year-old with a cork stuck up his nose – neither of the two somewhat baffled paramedics could work out how he'd managed this – had offered Dixie a seat,) and were somehow too exhausted to do anything but.

"Don't kill yourself," Jeff called after her, unloading the five odd boxes of prescription painkillers he was under instruction to take onto the table.

"Stop being cheeky," Dix retorted as she hobbled out into the stairwell. From the kitchen Jeff could hear her perfectly standard 'conquering Everest A.K.A the stairs' moans and groans, before a stunned cry and the repetitive thuds and final crash of someone falling down the stairs. Freaking out yet not missing a beat, Jeff stumbled through to the hall where Dix was lying, half-stunned, white in the face and clutching her leg.  
"Oh shit...Dix, what did you do this time?"  
"Fell up the stairs, what does it look like? Jeff, it really hurts...God, if I've broken it again...I...look, just call an ambulance!"

TO BE CONTINUED...


	9. Chapter 9

**Hey, where'd all my reviewers go?**

* * *

"This is pretty bloody stupid, isn't it, when you think that we're supposed to be paramedics," Dixie half-laughed, lying in a cubicle, Jeff sitting beside her on his phone. They'd been there for considerably less time than it'd taken with Jeff, though that was still just shy of two hours. Currently, it was the wrong side of eleven o'clock at night and the pair of the were completely bushed; Jeff's head was drooping forward and Dixie was having to poke him every so often to keep him awake, and it was only the pains in her leg, the side of her head and her arse that were preventing her from dropping off. "Oi, you! If you've fallen asleep on me, I swear I'll-"  
"I'm awake, I'm awake," Jeff said through a stifled yawn, putting his phone down. Looking up at Dixie, it was a laugh that Jeff was fighting off this time. "Seriously, is this deja vu or what?"  
One of the first things that had been done was Dix's cast had been removed in order to get decent x-rays and just in case of anything else having displaced itself, her leg was in a frac pac. The side of her face that had hit against the banister when she'd slipped was bruised and slightly swollen, her nose bleeding and hair dishevelled.  
"Jeff, quit trying to be funny, I'm not in the mood."  
"Seriously, back to your question. How the heck have we suddenly gotten so accident prone?"  
"Well, lets see; I can hardly walk, neither of us have slept properly in ages and-"

"Guys?" Ash stuck his head through the curtain, an iPad in his hand and his usual moody expression about his face. "Dix, I've got all your results back and it's relatively good news. The CT scan we took was purely to rule out the possibility of a fractured skull, but other than a slight concussion, which I think is only to be expected, you're fine in that department. The x-rays of your leg came out all clear, but you are suffering from a minor hairline fracture of the coxis, but that'll repair itself without any problems and all that we really have to do is prescribe you another load of painkillers. A few of the staples in your leg tore slightly, but that's the only damage."  
Dixie raised her eyebrow at Jeff. "And you said I was just being melodramatic."  
"No I never, I-"  
"Dixie was perfectly right to call an ambulance, or at least get you to do that for her. Still, that could have been a lot worse," Ash was giving her his funny look, and Dixie, absolutely resenting being spoken to like an impertinent child, swiftly changed the subject.  
"So I can go?"  
"As soon as we've re-sutured and plastered your leg, yes," Ash's face cracked into a broad grin. "I swear, if you two end up in here again...Look, Dixie, if you want my advice; crutches and stairs are a bad combination and next time you decide to have a stupid accident, do it on my day off."

* * *

"Dix?" Jeff seemed to be finding something unusually amusing as he helped Dixie into the car and deposited her crutches in the back seat.  
"Yes?"  
"What's a fractured coxis?"

Dixie face-palmed, bright red in the face, and not just from hitting it. She knew fine well that Jeff knew what this meant and the entire reason he was asking her was to humiliate the crap out of her. "It's a broken bum, Jeffrey," she said after a long pause. She'd given up on trying to come up with how to say it in a way that wouldn't sound totally stupid.  
Jeff fell about laughing, clutching at his sides and only bringing himself back down to earth when he hit his face and, consequently, his broken nose off of the steering wheel.  
"Jeff, it's not funny. I never laughed at you when you face-planted that lamppost."  
"Yeah, only 'cuz that left you lumped with the Friday lot to deal with by yourself."

* * *

Midway through the journey home, as the car had stopped by a junction, for reasons behind Jeff's understanding Dixie got out of the car, wobbling about a bit on her one functioning as she opened the back door and pulled her crutches off of the seats. It took a bit of faffing to get upright and able to walk, but when she did Jeff rolled down the window. "Dixie, where the hell are you going?"  
"Look, I..." Dixie was obviously hiding something, causing Jeff to smack his head off of the steering wheel in frustration, causing a loud beep of the horn. "Jeff, it doesn't matter. I'll be back in a minute."  
"What the hell do you mean it- Dix, Abs is gonna have shat the carpet by the time we get home at this rate!"  
"Jeff, just stay put, seriously!"  
"But I'm in the middle of the...for god's sake, Dixie..." Once Dix decided that she was gonna do something, there was never any telling her otherwise.

* * *

It was twelve minutes past one in the morning. Of late, Zoe hadn't been overly concerned about getting enough sleep to function since she'd decided to let herself take some time off, seeing as functioning wasn't something that she actually needed to do, but it was still a stupid time to have someone ring her doorbell. Padding down the stairs in bare feet and a black lace nightdress (her usual style of 'brass, class and a whole lot of sass' hadn't been impacted at all) running her hand through her tangled hair, yesterday's makeup smeared all across her face. She had no idea what kind of nutcase would come calling at this kind of hour, but as the door swung open, it appeared that the nutcase in question was none other than Dixie Collier.

"You're still alive," the blonde paramedic remarked coldly. Glancing her up and down, Zoe took in Dixie's half-swollen face and the coloured plaster cast bearing Jeff's signature on her leg.  
"Never thought pink was your colour," Zoe said, halfway between being sarcastic and giggling.  
"Yolo, right?" Dixie laughed, rolling her eyes. "Look, if I don't get back to the car soon then Jeff's gonna drive off without me."  
"Yeah, ok. What are you doing here? And what happened to your face?"  
"Fell down the stairs, no biggie. We were just getting back from the ED and the idea struck me. What the hell have you been doing with yourself? Tess's practically venting steam and Tom's been bricking himself because he let you away with walking out-"  
"Dixie, look I'm sorry. It'll have to take guts to do what you're doing and come try and talk to the woman who did this to you. But seriously, I was lying to Tess, but I really don't want to tell anyone the real reason behind..." Zoe face-palmed, shaking with silent sobs.  
"Zoe, tell me. You can trust me."  
"Yeah, but that kind of word gets around the ED like a cold. I-"  
"Zoe..."  
"Look, Dix, if you tell anyone I'll have your head, but...I was lying to Tess. I don't have an alcohol issue. I wasn't even at Tom's party. I...It was just a one-off. The booze. I was just freaking out about something and it just made it go away, and..." Zoe was in absolute floods now. The two women stood in Zoe's doorway in the dim light of the orange streetlamps, Zoe trying to control herself and Dixie attempting to piece together what the consultant had just told her.

"Dixie...I've got cancer..."

TO BE CONTINUED...


	10. Chapter 10

**I'm off school ill, and I really can't be bothered replying to reviews. Sorry :( Thanks for finally reading though, Reba! I'm pretty much running out of ideas for Bond fics right now, but as soon as one turns up, I'll write it as soon as I can! I am thinking about a 007/Casualty crossover featuring grown-up Andrew and Marion, though...**

* * *

"Oh my god..." Dixie had absolutely no idea what she was meant to say to this, or indeed how exactly she was meant to go about saying it without opening a wound in the process. How was she supposed to avoid sounding insensitive with a subject such as the one in hand? "I..."  
"You don't have to say anything," Zoe half-smiled, running her hand up her arm, feeling the goosebumps that had risen on her milky coffee-coloured skin. "I know that the word 'cancer' registers in people's heads as a death sentence, but I've dealt with it before." Zoe sighed, wishing that she'd done what could have prevented this from happening in the first place when she was fifteen and had just found out the hard way about her family's faulty gene that had she had ended up with. But when you're still in and nowhere near finished school and you've got to pick between losing your hair - which, bear in mind, grows back - or your boobs - which don't - to cancer then the obvious option is number one. Still, nothing had freaked her out more in her life than the day after her second chemo treatment, when she'd woken up and half of her hair had stayed on the pillow.

Dixie's jaw dropped as she registered the information just given to her. "Before? You mean like..."  
"Dix, I'm not interested in your sympathy because I really don't need it. Look, I had it before when I was in my teens and yeah, I freaked. This time it was different, even if I was given the all clear twenty something years ago. I found a lump, I went to get it checked out and to be quite frank, when the guy told me it was cancer I wasn't surprised. That was the day before you-know-what; I slept on it and then the whole idea that I was gonna have to go through it all again hit me the next day, and..." she made a noise that wasn't quite a laugh but still not something that could be described as a sob. "You know the rest."

Dixie's teeth were grinding together - she was still trying to assemble a reasonable response - and she was nervously playing around with a lock of her hair as the pair stood in an awkward silence. She wanted to ask Zoe if she was going to be okay on her own, what it had been like the first time round, if and when she was going to come back to work; but in her head each and every one of these things sounded intrusive and bluntly insensitive. Finally, she managed to come out with; "What about your hair and stuff?"  
Zoe shook her head dismissively. "I've been sorting the whole thing out at a private clinic in London - word would get out if I decided on treatment in Holby. I'm gonna go in for a double mastectomy in three days; make sure it can't happen again."

Dixie made to speak again, but the loud beep of a car horn to her left stopped her in her tracks, causing her to just about fall over and both her and Zoe's heads to turn.  
"Dixie, mate," Jeff was leaning out the window of the car, his hand still on the wheel and the engine running. "It's two in the morning, do me a favour and let me go home!"  
"Not without me you aren't!" Dixie turned back to Zoe as she hobbled off in the direction of the car. "I'm here if you need me, Zo. Catch up, yeah?"  
"Dix, get a move on!" Jeff gave a curt nod to Zoe and said her name as Dixie got herself into the car. His tone made Dix feel like slapping him. Never in all the time she'd known him, had she felt like slapping him.

* * *

"Dixie, you aren't serious," Jeff nipped at her as they hit the end of Zoe's cul-de-sac, realized they'd gone the wrong way and made a u-turn. "Why in hell would you wanna talk to her after all that?"  
"Cuz I'm willing to put this behind me. Just because you aren't doesn't mean that you can put me on a lead. Why do you have such a big issue with her?"  
"She made me look like a complete dick in front of everyone!"  
"Oh, so you've decided to make this all about Jeff, just like everything else!"  
"You're not denying that she did."  
"Because as far as I think right now, you _are _a complete dick. Jeff, you're being a complete insensitive bastard and I can't understand it! One second you're the most apologetic little sod in the universe, begging me to forgive you for something you didn't do; the next you've gone from one extreme to another because I worry about the fact that Zoe could have been bloody dead - and in actual fact, she's got cancer, not alcoholism, so you can just buck up your ideas about that subject - and it's all about you and your 'pride'! And I used to wonder why I'm not into blokes!"  
"Yeah, you're the one who got hurt so all eyes have to be on you!"  
"That isn't what I'm saying, I-"  
"La la la, I can't hear you!" Jeff chided with his fingers in his ears.  
"JEFFREY, FOR GOD'S SAKE! What I'm, TRYING to say is that I don't give a shit about this whole thing - you're causing the problem by trying to fix it!"  
"I just didn't think that you'd be so...this about the whole thing!"  
"I've told you a million times that I don't care!" The car pulled up, and despite the time it took her to sort her crutches out and get herself out of the door, Dixie was the first out. "And you can sleep on the sofa tonight."


End file.
